NYTBR

COW COUNTRY by Adrian Jones Pearson. 540 pp.

(Cow Eye Press, $34.95.) While lyricism may not be what one would expect from an “epic” novel about educational administration, it certainly abounds in this eccentric opus detailing the adventures of a special projects coordinator trying to unite a divided professoriate at a fictional community college. Replete with intellectual dialogues and diatribes, this somewhat uneven and ungainly work might have benefitted from compression. Yet amid the over-the-top madness and seemingly unending road trips into nothingness it offers an astute observer’s glance not only into our creaking system of higher education, but also into the chaotic and polarized state of an increasingly fractionalized American society.

Mary Greenwell